Martyn Prowel, a specialist law firm, has recently deployed BigHand speech recognition in order to transform its client document production process. The new addition of speech recognition will enable the company’s fee earners to benefit from enhanced efficiency and accuracy when transcribing witness statement documents.

A couple of weeks into the pilot of the software, Martyn Prowel was so happy with the speech recognition functionality, the company decided to roll the feature out to all 15 fee earners across the company. Then, Maryn Prowl recognized the true potential to use speech recognition as a tool to improve its process of producing client witness statements, decrease document turnaround time and the time spent by fee earners deliberating with witnesses over the content of the statement.

“BigHand allows us to take lengthy and detailed statements with witnesses and have final signed versions in one meeting. Speech Recognition has proven an invaluable tool to all our users, and the immediate benefits of using the software in this way has created new efficiencies for us which previously were out of reach,” said Hywel Davies, managing partner at Martyn Prowel.

This use of speech recognition software has enabled Martyn Prowel fee earners to present a complete transcribed document to the witness, to proof and sign, in just minutes of taking their statement. In addition, it has saved the company a lot of money and time as it eliminates the need for fee earners to chase clients to sign their statements at a later date and removes the challenge of witnesses wanting to change the statements. And, speech recognition software decreases the amount of disputes previously faced when there were a few days delay in the transcription process.

Davies added, “This saves time and effort and allows a witness to check and sign a statement there and then. The software is easy to use and a welcomed addition.”

Having paved the way for many other legal firms facing the same exact challenges, Martyn Prowel believes using the speech recognition software in this way will continue to improve productivity and create more time for billable work across the company.

According to the company, this is a massive technological advancement for the firm. To date, more than 191,000 legal professionals use BigHand software to improve productivity and profitability. BigHand have partnered with Nuance combining their Dragon software with BigHand software to create the BigHand speech recognition module. Typically the software has proven an alternative transcription resource for both legal and professional firms, enhancing their productivity levels, efficiency and profitability.

Contributing Author

Amanda Ciccatelli

Amanda G. Ciccatelli is a Contributing Writer for InsideCounsel, where she covers the patent litigation space. Amanda earned a B.A. in Communications and Journalism from...